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The Odyssey of Homer

Author: Richmond Lattimore | Language: English | ISBN: B002TIOYT4 | Format: PDF

The Odyssey of Homer Description

From Library Journal

While Mandelbaum and the University of California Press are to be commended for attempting this new translation of The Odyssey , those of Robert Fitzgerald (Doubleday, 1963) and Richard Lattimore (Harper & Row, 1968) still remain the versions of choice for serious students who don't know Greek. Mandelbaum's poetry is fluent but lacks the feeling for the original that he brought to his fine translations of Virgil ( The Aeneid of Virgil , Bantam, 1976) and Dante ( The Divine Comedy: The Inferno , Bantam, 1982). There is a looseness in the translation that often misses the intricacy and interconnection of The Odyssey as a whole. Illustrated with engravings, this is essentially a coffee-table book.
- T.L. Cooksey, Arm strong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The best...translator of Greek poetry into English is Richmond

Lattimore...This is the best Odyssey in modern English."

-- -- Gilbert Highet

"[Lattimore's] Odyssey is his masterpiece."

-- -- Walter Kaufmann

"In this Odyssey Professor Lattimore has achieved his chef d'oeuvre as a translator...[A] dazzling and well-nigh flawless performance...Here is a master in perfect control of his medium...A landmark in the history of modern translation...It would be a crime to underestimate the miraculous and self-effacing artistry with which Professor Lattimore has reanimated Homer for this generation, and perhaps for other generations to come." -- Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Lattimore's translation of Homer's Odyssey is the most eloquent, persuasive, and imaginative I have seen. It reads as if the poem had originally been written in English." -- Paul Engle

"The best...translator of Greek poetry into English is Richmond Lattimore...This is the best Odyssey in modern English." -- Gilbert Highet

"[Lattimore's] Odyssey is his masterpiece." -- Walter Kaufmann

"[Lattimore's] complete Homer is indeed a splendid achievement, and I shall be very far from being alone in regarding it...as the best translation there is of a great, perhaps the greatest, poet." -- Rex Warner, New York Times Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details
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File Size: 960 KB
Print Length: 386 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0060931957
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Reissue edition (March 17, 2009)
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
Language: English
ASIN: B002TIOYT4
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #134,770 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

This Lattimore translation of "The Odyssey" was the first book I read last quarter for my Comparative Literature class, and it became a preview of coming wonders. I had neglected the old classics out of ignorance and prejudice (these two tend to go together) and "The Odyssey" was one of those books that forced me to look at an entire collection of genres and literary epochs in a different, far more positive way. I do not know Greek, therefore I cannot say whether the translation is absolutely faithful to the original, but it flows well when read silently and it sounds even better when I read it aloud, alone at night. This is the story of Odysseus, King of Ithaka, Captain of the Greeks, who must return to his homeland and his family after helping defeat the Trojans. Amazingly enough, many people seem to have bought entirely into the idea of Odysseus as a noble, courageous, and honorable leader of men who gets sidetracked solely because of the wrath of Poseidon. I finished this poem with an entirely different view of its protagonist. To me, Odysseus was an arrogant liar, a murderer and a rapist who did not hesitate to attack people who were not his enemies (the Kikonians on his way back after sacking Troy and killing and/or enslaving most of its people, as reads in Book IX, page 138), and who did not hesitate to endanger the lives of his men just to boast of his deeds (same Book, page 150). This "hero" eventually makes it to Ithaka and ends up drenched in the blood of the suitors of his wife, ordering the torture and death of the serving women who had become lovers of the suitors. His son Telemachos becomes a murderer as well: he kills a man by stabbing him on the back with a javelin.

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